It may be hidden in the basement of the Museum of Art, but the
reputation of the Museum's Asian Conservation Lab is well known
across the country to collectors and other museums.

In the Asian Conservation Lab, museum preparator Kewei Wang
practices ancient skills in this essential behind-the-scenes
ingredient in the care and management of the Museum's vast Asian
holdings. It is here that Wang, who has trained for nearly all her
life to do what she does at the Museum, takes on restoration work for
paying clients as well as for museums around the country. The lab is
one of a very few facilities of its kind in the country, comparable
to workshops housed only at the Freer Gallery, the Metropolitan
Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Even
private collectors of Asian art seek out the Museum's laboratory.

Wang joined the Museum staff last year after decades of study and
conservation work at the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Mannheim
Kunsthalle in Germany. "Paste alone takes years to learn," says
Marshall Wu, the Museum's senior curator of Asian art.

The paste Wu refers to is prepared from "scratch" by processing
flour to separate the starch from the gluten. One of the uses for
such paste is in stabilizing the silk base on which a painting is
done because the silk often has to be removed from its original paper
backing.